[ORP] Let's quietly insert this USB (CONCLUSION P.4)

[Rown]

". . . . . . " Ofelia leaned over Deryk's shoulder as the screen came up, her eyes scanning information. She was never very fast at reading nor did she pretend to or make excuses for it, but as she scrolled up and down the list one piece of information caught her eye more than anything else. " . . . . One hundred an' ninety eight casualties? What the - jus' what the hell were they all doin'? This was on New Years? "

What the hell sort of mission had they all been on that would kill so many of them off at once? Who were the two survivors? This had happened twelve years ago - she would have been six at the time - and barely remembering anything. Already she'd have lost her eye by the time the New Year had rolled around and she thought that was a loss - but for 198 people to just...die? "How come none'a us ever heard'a this?"  

[Blade Kuroda]

The little sense of victory Deryk had in managing to crack the password soon faded as he saw the contents of this archive. In fact, his blood kind of ran cold.

"...wh..what happened?"

It seemed like they had been dealing with the horsemen. Were.. the clans really that strong? Seeing how it's been coming up a lot as of late, he was starting to get a really bad feeling about what was to come.

"Looks like they covered it up good. Probably bad for morale.." he said quietly, while trying to remember where he had been at that time. That was when he went to New York with his parents. To see the ball drop.  

[revenant aria]

It is advised that future Hunters wear protective gear: gas masks/air filters, light-amplifying goggles. Multiple traps in floors, walls, ceiling. Sound echos.

Saya's hands clutched her chest .. They deployed .. diseases? Did that mean, all the trainees who went on the mission was sick? Was it just dormant in their systems?

Wait, no, that was only from the Pestilence clan. But what if a pestilence clan member had been there? How were they supposed to fight the unseeable? The invisible was one thing but to inability to see or avoid diseases.. Every single word was painful to read on screen, to the point where she had frozen and stopped scrolling a few times.

Breedings? Bloodlines? Saya's finger dug into the desk, her eyes widening and her body reeling back from the text on screen. She pushed her chair back, suddenly, her eyes briefly ending at the bottom of the screen. Perhaps she scrolled down too fast for some of the crowd to see, exiting her chair, to let some other be seated. She couldn't process this. No, she just ..

For now, this usb would have to be kept safe among the trainees.

..Except ..

.. two hundred deaths?

There were barely fifty of them, as far as Saya had seen or met. In fact, that was a generous number. As big as Deus was, it wasn't exactly bustling like a high school filled with kids. In fact, she was having a hard time handling two deaths. And this was multiplied. By a hundred.

Two hundred?!  

[Kaiyumi]

Eva remained standing over Saya's shoulder, her expression unreadable as she watched Deryk take over the keyboard. She said nothing as he worked at the code, her gaze focused intently on the screen as her heart sped up in anticipation. Eva wasn't at all surprised when the "access denied" screen popped up for each of his attempts, but she didn't lose hope--Deryk could do it. She knew he could. Just a little more, and maybe--

--There.

"Nice job, Deryk," She commended him softly, shooting him a small smile before looking back to the screen. She skimmed the text as Saya scrolled down, eyes darting back and forth as she took in each line.

By the time she got to the bottom of the screen, Eva's lips were pressed into a tight, thin line, her knuckles white as she gripped onto the back of Saya's suddenly abandoned chair. What was all of this about? A mission from around New Years of 2000, if the date was any indication, but what exactly happened? Her attention was fixated on one particular line: Hunter casualties total 198/200.

198 out of 200.

"How could this..." Any hope of Eva getting a good night's sleep that evening was immediately dashed away by this one file.  

[Manda]

Tedan was still staring at the numbers on the screen, hardly able to believe what he was seeing. Nearly two hundred Hunters dead on a single mission ... and that wasn't trainees. That was Hunters. Fully trained, probably most of the fairly experienced ...what kind of chances did they have if something huge like this came up again? God ....

"It says something about ... the Horseman clans here..."  

[Baneful]

Rep let the people with the brains do the actual cracking of the USB, simply for once in his life hovering on the periphery like some sort of information vulture. His curiosity was piqued by it all, and he just waited patiently as they talked it out. He'd have offered his own opinions but in matters outside breaking s**t up, his eyes sort of glazed over and his brain went quiet.

Did Tracey actually sound /worried/?

And then Deryk proved himself to actually be pretty damn effective. Rep was impressed as the new screen came up, leaning in with the others to get a look at what they had to say. As he read through it was like a lead weight dropped into his gut. The description of the hunters dying horrifically to the diseases in the assaults.

And then the casualty list. Holy s**t. Hoooly s**t. There had to hardly be that many hunters even on the island at the moment in time. So many deaths. Two people /lived/. Two. Out of two hundred.

"No ******** wonder they covered it up." He spoke up, the first thing he'd said in a while. "If they want us to go down into those lairs they might as well not ******** tell us what's waiting on us. ********, I know I wish I could forget this. Against whatever it is that could kill like nearly 200 hunters? We wouldn't have a snowflake's chance in hell."
 

[Rown]

"Musta been a really shitty kinda mission." Ofelia shrugged her shoulders as she continued to read the information, wondering just who some of these people were. She recognized Aria's name but still didn't really click anything together, instead just thinking about new years. What had she done around that time?

Ah yes, that was it - she and her brother lit fireworks in the field and caught some of the grass on fire. Her aunt had been furious and had beaten the both of them, leaving them to comply until she went to bed and more fireworks were lit. It was a good memory, for what it was worth. "Are the horsemen people really that bigga deal? Ah mean, Ah've heard'a them in books an' such but never gotten ta tango wit' the thought they could be real?"

Her question wasn't aimed at anyone specific.  

[Manda]

Even though the question wasn't exactly directed at anyone, Tedan turned to stare at Ofelia for a moment or two. Oh ... that's right, she was new enough not to have been there when ... "One of them by himself almost crushed a lot of us during a mission not too long ago," he murmured. And he literally meant crushed, wincing just slightly at the memory of the pain.

"If all four of them were there ... that ... must've been really bad."  

[Sosiqui]

Madison stared at the screen, all hope for secrecy pretty much blown at this point, but... holy god. "Horsemen," she whispered. "No, they are a... I've met some of them. Not the Horsemen, but the... the heirs..." But even the heirs never done anything like that, not that she'd seen. Setting hair on fire wasn't anything like killing almost two hundred people. And the damage that had been done to the trainees by just one of the undamaged Horsemen...

Kouki made a soft keening sound inside her head. We do not like this.

Me neither, she thought back. The serpent-sword made an uneasy mental shift and settled possessively against her, inasmuch as he was capable of doing so. The last mission had affected him deeply, probably because it was weapons retrieval. Together, Hunter and Weapon were powerful... separate, they were weak.

A Hunter-less weapon was utterly helpless, utterly alone.  

[Sosiqui]

Something else caught Madison's eye. Hunter casualties as estimated.

Hunter casualties as estimated.

"They... someone... they knew they were going to..." Madison rocked back on her heels, stunned. "Somebody knew how bad it was going to be, and they did it anyway, they..."

Marcus' words drew some of her attention, too, and the pieces assemble themselves in her mind. "Wait. Wait. The end of the - the date on this, 12/31/1999... everyone thought the world was gonna end then, kinda, didn't they? The Y2K bug and s**t, right? Was it... did they... try?! Ending the world?"

And had the Hunters... stopped it? How much power did these Horsemen have? And, for that matter, how much power did the Hunters have - capable of stopping the end of the world? The thought took her breath away. Even if it had been paid for dearly, in blood, that was still one hell of a thing...  

[Manda]

Madison's words caught Tedan's attention then, and he turned to stare at her. That was right ... 1999, the new millennium, all of the hype about the world ending for whatever reason ... oh ********. "Maybe ... maybe you're right, maybe they did try. I ... I could see them being capable of that, if they planned it out and all."

He glanced at the computer screen again, at the page that was up about the world ending in 2012. "Are they going to try again..? Do we ... have to stop them?" They weren't anywhere near ready for something like that.  

[Baneful]

Rep glanced to Madison as she voiced her realisations, the knot in his gut feeling even worse. They knew they were going to die and sent them anyway. It didn't make sense, at least, not until people mentioned the date. Maybe it was /unavoidable/, maybe they'd had no ******** hell. And yet for all that they aren't beaten yet? Do we have to deal with this all over again? Was that just a ******** /stopgap/ manuever?"

 

[Rown]

"Yano, this was like...twelve years ago - doya think we mighta gotten better tech since then? Like those golem things? Ah fi'gur they were made so we dun have ta go an' die directly, right?" Ofelia crossed her arms and looked at everyone, trying to make sense of it all. "Surely they're not stupid 'nough now ta jus' launch full-blown hunters at stuff wit'out even testin' the waters. Nowadays they got us ta die for 'em an' Ah'm sure we all came here knowin' we could die."

Okay Ofelia hadn't come knowing she would die, but whatever. She was trying to make a point.